TO HELP: SOMEWHERE.
There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree
by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village.
All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to
make payment,--and all having demands against the same to present
accounts,--to Abigail S. Ingraham.
The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon
the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer
color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and
white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a
plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to
wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen
window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they
were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room,
looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices,
but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary
documents.
Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's
breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name
stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has
always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy
out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready
to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in
the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for
relinquishing this and the goodwill.
Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was
different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she
had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and
incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for
the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She
understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps,
have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been
brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what
they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave
them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and
thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she
saw how that made all the difference.
"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate."
That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot
especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were
bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing,
could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve
the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what
might happen?"
She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she
said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that.
It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she
didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and
assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a
seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything,"
was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this
point of her considerations. And if he were anything,--anything of a
man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,--what would they
do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to
her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will
be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real
womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found
out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you
must choose as a man does,--for your whole life, at the beginning of
it."
Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this
turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed
her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took
up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot
of _working for others_.
"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be
safe and faithful; that will leave room."
She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat
talking with her over some building accounts one evening.
He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways;
beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his
own employer who held a small demand against the estate.
"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as
if I _must_ have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to
keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot--how can
I tell what either of us"--she changed her word with brave honesty,
"might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were
forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for
journeymen,--girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be
brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want
business and they would be free, while they _were_ girls, for
happier things that might happen."
"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best
right of all."
"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she
can't be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her. I
suppose _that_ is what has kept women out of the real business
world,--the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm
willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me."
There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's
deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray
Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly
perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made
the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power
ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most
tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman
accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He
hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie
ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In
dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in
the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a
servant. He lays _help_ upon him; He lays help for man upon the
woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help
meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "_help_" is to do the work
of the world.
Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said
that she would "help, somewhere."
What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say,
with a flash in his eyes,--
"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?"
"I'm _very_ glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?"
"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,--flashy, I
mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to
build all sorts, you know. When I build _my_ house--well, never
mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out.
He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the
care of it straight through,--stock, work, and all; and I'm to have
half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full,
you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this
year a whole street going up--with Mansard roofs, of course.
Everything is going into this house that _can_ go into a house; and
to see that it gets in right will be--practice, anyhow."
Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray
what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was
so glad to be told.
He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when
she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a
few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the
little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the
Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer.
Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it
glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it
contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream
and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress,"
she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a
reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together,
and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go
to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places;
folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities;
they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do.
Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before
her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else
left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green
dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room.
The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to
get her own pay.
What was the use of telling a girl like that--all flushed with
beauty and vanity, and gay expectation--about his having a house to
build? What would it seem to her,--his busy life all spring and
summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting,
chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles
and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in
laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into
his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself
lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be
applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a
dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there
was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain;
only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of
people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate
amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare?
It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done
before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her
glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of
them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely,
lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very
face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all
enticing, outward complement and suggestion.
He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a
mistake.
Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with
herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself
manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses.
Was she glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this
poor side of her--making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, so much?
"Marion has something better in her than that," she made herself
say, when she replied. "Perhaps it will come out again, some day."
"I think she has. Perhaps it will. You have always been good and
generous to her, Ray."
What did he say that for? Why did he make it impossible for her to
let it go so?
"Don't!" she exclaimed. "I am not generous to her this minute! I
couldn't help, when you said it, being satisfied--that you should
see. I don't know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do
want people to see the truth."
She covered it up with that last sentence. The first left by
itself, might have shown him more. It was certainly so; that there
was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear
perception and her very honesty. When she could see a thing, it
seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she
ought to show them, that they might fairly understand. A half
understanding made her restless, even though the other half were
less kind and comfortable.
"You show the truth of yourself, too," said Frank. "And that is
grand, at any rate."
"You need not praise me," said Ray, almost coldly. "It is impossible
to be _quite_ true, I think. The nearer you try to come to it, the
more you can't"--and then she stopped.
"How many changes there have been among us!" she began again,
suddenly, at quite a different point, "All through the village there
have been things happening, in this last year. Nobody is at all as
they were a year ago. And another year"--
"Will tell another year's story," said Frank Sunderline. "Don't you
like to think of that sometimes? That the story isn't done, ever?
That there is always more to tell, on and on? And that means more to
_do_. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right still, you
see,--why, the Lord might as well shut up the book!"
He was full of life, this young man, and full of the delight of
living. There was something in his calling that made him rejoice in
a confident strength. He was born to handle tools; hammer and chisel
were as parts of him. He builded; he believed in building; in
something coming of every stroke. Real work disposes and qualifies a
man to believe in a real destiny,--a real God. A carpenter can see
that nails are never driven for nothing. It is the sham work,
perhaps, of our day, that shakes faith in purpose and unity; a
scrambling, shifty living of men's own, that makes to their sight a
chance huddle and phantasm of creation.
Mrs. Ingraham came down into the room where they were, at this
moment, and Dot presently followed. They began to talk of their
plans. They were going, now, to live with the grandmother in Boston,
in Pilgrim Street.
It was a comfortable, plain old house, in a little strip of
neighborhood long since left of fashion, and not yet demanded of
business; so Mrs. Rhynde could afford to occupy it. She had used,
for many years, to let out a part of her rooms,--these that the
Ingrahams would take,--in a tenement, as people used to say, making
no ambitious distinctions; now, it might be spoken of as "a flat,"
or "apartments." Everything is "apartments" that is more than a
foothold.
The rooms were large, but low. At the back, they were sunny and
airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence
Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain.
There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces,
even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of
tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard. The step into
the front passage was a step down from the street.
Ray and Dot told these things; beguiled into reminiscences of
pleasant childish visiting days; Ray, of long domestication in still
later years. It would be a going home, after all.
Leicester Place was only a stone's throw from Pilgrim Street. From
old Mr. Sparrow's attic window, you could look across to the
Pilgrim Street roofs, and see women hanging out clothes there upon
the flat tops of one or two of the houses. But what of that, in a
great city? Will the Ingrahams ever come across Aunt Blin and bright
little Bel Bree?
In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a
leaf between them. A great many of us may be as near as that to each
other in the telling of the world's story, who never get the leaf
turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a
connecting word.
The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer. It was July
when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin.